Although I’ve been blogging and reading the paper a bit the past few days, I’ve gotten my vacation on in a way that I haven’t in quite a while. Checking back in with the American media with at least a slight sense of distance, it is striking how much harder they are on Obama they were on Bush.
I don’t say that as a complaint, simply a statement of fact.
David Broder has already declared that Obama’s honeymoon is over. I don’t say that as a complaint either, but since the “honeymoon period” is largely a construct of the punditocracy which Broder heads up, this does mean that Obama’s honeymoon is over. Indeed — other Villagers like Dowd and Ignatius are already savaging Obama.
Now, by any reasonable measure, the Bush honeymoon lasted until mid-2003. One might argue that part of this was the 9/11 effect. In a time of national crisis, the media might be expected to rally around the president.
On the other hand, this recession is a national crisis too, and it has only served to amplify criticism of Obama. Whereas we were told with Bush, that because of the War on Terror, we were either with the president or with the terrorists, we are now told with Obama, that because of the recession, that we have to hold Obama to a higher standard than other presidents.
If one believes, as I do, that good decisions come from close scrutiny, then one must also believe that presidents should be scrutinized more closely during times of crisis. But it’s difficult for me to understand why this applies to Obama and not to Bush.
I realize that everything I say here may seem obvious to people. But I rarely see it stated as a matter of fact, which in my opinion it is.
What is the cause of this? Some of it is that liberals like to criticize (I know I do), while conservatives like to fall in line. Some of it is that “nonpartisan” commentators gain in stature when they attack Democrats and fall when they criticize Republicans. Maybe these facts constitute the entire explanation.
But it’s hard for me to see how this doesn’t end in ruin. Media scrutiny does, I believe, make for smarter, more careful decision-making. But it also makes for tougher political sledding. So the very thing that makes our government work also makes political leaders unpopular. And, for whatever, reason it now distributes itself differently for one party than the other.
Is this one of those systemic flaws that can’t be corrected?
Warren Terra
Dubya got two honeymoons: the first one ended sometime in the summer of 2001 (after he signed No Child Left Behind with Ted Kennedy at his shoulder and before Jeffords fled the party). In fact, one of my weirdest memories is getting home from a long night in the research lab, having a pleasant dinner listening to Molly Ivins predict the collapse of Bush’s planned budget in Congress on Morning Edition, and going to bed around 7 AM. It was September 11th, and when I woke up everything had changed.
Dubya’s second honeymoon, initiated by the 9/11 attacks, lasted with most Congressional Democrats until at least he started campaigning really ugly in the 2002 midterms, and lasted with the mainstream media until at least some time after the Mission Accomplished moment.
NobodySpecial
Unless you get Democrats to run the businesses that run the media, no.
This has been another episode of…
Ash
There’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it. Except sit around and watch helplessly as the assholes who run the media conglomerations hire the worst possible people and skewer the political process so that a Republican can once again get elected and make life easier for them and their bank accounts.
BombIranForChrist
I wonder how much credibility the punditocracy really has. David Broder was ripping his hairshirt on a daily basis during the Lewinsky mess, and it didn’t hurt Clinton’s approval ratings.
I think there are two competing forces here:
1. Regular people hate Washington opinion leaders.
2. Regular people listen to Washington opinion leaders.
Which is more true?
I have no idea.
Patrick
I have no idea why the media was so easy on Bush. From the beginning to even the end. The media scrutiny of Clinton was even worse than Obama, so far. There are probably many reasons why you have media scrutiny, then eight years of nothing, then media scrutiny again. But if you look at what was scrutinized with Clinton and now Obama, it is all dumb things. Minutiae that make for a 10 minute conversation on TV, but that voters don’t care about. That is the biggest take-away. If you look at the approval ratings for Clinton, Bush, and Obama, it is obvious that the MSM is not in step with how most Americans think and have not been since 1996.
I think some of it is that the conservative media simply has no problem criticizing and opposing. The Democrats in the Senate certainly do. 2000-2006, the Senate Dems had the only power (and hardly used it as a minority), so there was no criticism of Bush. It was only later, after the left blogosphere became the left’s answer for talk radio, that criticism of Bush started. Even then, it was never amplified in the MSM. But voters heard it.
Obama has a 87% approval rating in the Northeast (and close to it in the West and Midwest). That is an unbelievable figure. Yet, all I heard today was that his number is dropping (because the South doesn’t like him as much).
Michael
I think there’s a North-South, Black-White thing going on. I saw some polling approval graphs that showed a huge disparity between the South and the rest of the country in terms of how they view the guy.
It is really damned sad. Too many in the South still refuse to come to grips with the callous behavior of their own immediate ancestors and extended families during the Civil Rights era, and harbor too many nasty conditioned attitudes.
bootlegger
It is systemic, but "media" is not static. In fact, one can convincingly argue that the current transformation will decentralize the locus of control and weaken the strength of the Village. I also think that Obama and his team do a great job of running misdirection plays that confound the Village. They’ve said many times, for example, that they don’t play the "24-hour news cycle" game, instead opting for the longer-term impact of their political moves. This strategy doesn’t "sound" like its working because it is short circuiting the Village, so we’ll have to gauge its efficacy in other ways.
Don’t fret over the Villagers’ death throes.
AhabTRuler
Yeah, well then how did we end up being the only ones fucked?
TimO
It’s a good thing that Obama doesn’t seem to give a shit what DaBro and MoDo think and that Robert Gibbs "thoroughly enjoyed" Stewart drinking Cramer’s milkshake.
georgia pig
Bush needed a honeymoon because he was such an idiot. For example, watching Obama handle a group like the Business Roundtable makes you realize what a vacuous Babbitt Bush was. Yeah, it sucks that Obama has to suffer criticism more than Bush, but he’s a helluva lot smarter than Bush. He seems to know how to deflect the stupid criticism (e.g., "you’re doing too much!") and to adjust in response to the (rare) constructive criticism. Things like the Stewart/CNBC dustup also make me wonder if a lot of people are waking up, at least a little, to the idiocy that has been our media for the last several years, and how refreshing it is to have a president that actually seems to know what he’s doing.
kay
@Patrick:
I don’t know. I like to watch one number. Right direction/wrong track. I like to watch that spread. The economy just fell off a cliff. Why is that gap narrowing? For whatever reason, Americans appear to believe we are getting back on some sort of "right track". It’s incremental, but it’s going in one direction.
It has to be Obama, because Republicans have offered nothing of value whatsoever, let alone any coherent, consistent idea of what a "right direction" might look like. All they offer is this: they are insisting we’re on the wrong track. It doesn’t look like Americans agree.
AhabTRuler
It has certainly happened before.
kay
I’d just like to mention another thing I’ve noticed. Obama works really hard. Bill Clinton worked really hard. They put in a lot of hours.
I remember jokes about Ronald Reagan and his all-important recreational….activities and, well, days, and I watched Bush put in 20 hour workweeks, with a lot of time spent on the stupid ranchette, for 8 years. Both men were famous for having a strictly enforced….bedtime. It was portrayed as an adorable eccentricity.
I’m starting to think Democrats work harder.
Warren Terra
Really? Because it’s not at all clear to me that even Cramer himself is waking up, let alone "people" more broadly. And that’s after a televised humiliation and dressing-down that got national applause.
Tax Analyst
This is exactly the point and it needs to be emphasized as much as possible. It’s sad and too bad that it does, but when you point out the obvious "fail" of what the Republicans are saying it brings the attention back to where it belongs – what Obama is trying to do…which is pull us out of the sh*t we’ve been dumped into.
You can argue particulars after that because you’ve just removed the Republicans from the game.
Dork
The media is NOT here to report the facts, they’re here to make money. This is corporate, cable news fact. Republicans are more favorable to letting corporations make shitloads of unchecked money.
Hence, they will fight (dishonestly, natch) until another R takes over. Pretty much what Ash said.
QrazyQat
In a time of national crisis, the media might be expected to rally around the president.
They might if the president is doing something about that crisis, such as when Bush was going after Afghanistan and bin Laden. But if that president stops doing that effectively and goes after wacky goals based on lies, as Bush did with Iraq, ignoring the crisis (ie. yanking the forces who were after bin Laden) one should expect that same media to blast that president soundly and regularly. They didn’t.
smiley
@Patrick:
Nicknames and slaps on the back. And good food on the campaign plane.
AhabTRuler
@Warren Terra: Maybe, maybe not. Remember that Crossfire didn’t immediately roll over and die like the cockroach that it was, but after Stewart unmanned Carlson, the show went from low credibility to no credibility.
Punchy
@Tax Analyst: Holy fuck. Cramer just snarked the whole thing away. What a complete fucking asshole. What a worthless cretin of a man.
used to be disgusted
I’m no fan of Bush, or of the media.
But I’m really not sure that the pundits *have* been harder on Obama than they were on Bush. I haven’t done a systematic survey, so I won’t assert this too confidently. But my impression is that the media is being pretty kind to Obama right now. Which is not to say that they’re treating progressive causes evenhandedly; everyone knows, e.g., that a tax increase on the top bracket + a tax cut for 95% of us = "raising taxes." But when it comes to Obama personally, I don’t hear a lot of hostility.
I think some perceptions to the contrary might be observation bias: i.e., when we read something that sounds like bullshit, we hear an "opinion," but when we read something that sounds true to us, we just hear "news."
Hedley Lamarr
Bush’s lengthy 9/11 honeymoon was caused by what will surely turn out to be the less serious of the two crises. After all, no sacrifices by the general public were called for by aWol, whereas economic sacrifces by all now will be serious and ongoing.
TR
The Washington media is certainly hardwired for Republicans. For the past forty years, the GOP has been working the refs hard, and the Beltway media has been bending over backwards to prove they’re not liberal like the conservatives say.
Someone needs to tell the children in the Beltway media that Spiro Agnew is dead and gone, and his mean words can’t hurt them anymore.
Tony J
But… but.. but… if the MSM acknowledges and reports on the facts that a) Obama won a massive mandate from the American electorate by defining himself against the policies of George W. Bush and the Republican Party, b) the American people clearly do not like, agree with, or otherwise support the rump of the Republican Party that is trying to obstruct Obama’s policies, then, what happens in two years when Congress goes to the polls again? What happens in four years when Obama is up for reelection?
Where’s the drama? Where’s the horserace? Where’s the vital and financially rewarding need for expert political pundits to deciphre the cryptic ups-and-downs that decide a Race that OMG could go the the wire?
Shorter MSM – He ain’t heavy, he’s just the stinking, rotted corpse of my dead Republican brother.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
@Punchy:
I can’t stand to watch even a minute of that video. Can you give a bit more detail about what Cramer said?
Tax Analyst
If his BBQ sauce had been better McCain might be President today. And he’d still be in the early stages of his media honeymoon, too. Any criticism at this point could be deflected as "mean-spirited" and "partisan" in nature. Shame, shame – pickin’ on poor John. Did you know he was once a POW?
Country First. La-la-la.
AhabTRuler
You didn’t realize that when you saw the interview? What I saw was an addict bargaining his way out of taking responsibility, and I believed little of it. The point wasn’t about Cramer, it was about showing the audience how craven people such as Cramer can be. Will it sink in, who knows?
Napoleon
@kay:
Remember when the Republicans took over Congress they cut back the hours to basically 3 day work weeks. When the dems took back over the reversed it, and that Republican knob from Georgia with a name something like Jack Kinston was quoted whining about having to work full weeks.
Tax Analyst
It’s hard to flesh-out brain-dead ideas. Just TRY doing it for three days every week and I’ll just bet you’ll be totally exhausted.
Besides, the "base" don’t need no stinkin’ details. "Sound-bite" law-making satisfies their primal needs.
georgia pig
@Warren Terra:
Who gives a shit what Cramer thinks? Cramer is a fucking bandit and a charlatan. I would expect he would try to spin it. He actually thought he would go on Stewart’s show and roll him. Even showed up in costume. He’s likely a dead man walking, or vibrating, or whatever you want to call that schtick he does.
Joshua Norton
Sorry, but the Obama "honeymoon" lasts at least until next Sept. 11. All the wingnutz did was yammer that ChimpCo was too new and inexperienced to handle the 9/11 crisis properly.
Of course, the hairdo’s are mostly dumping on Obama because they’re in the rarefied income bracket that will be paying higher taxes. Anyone who takes tax and investment advice from that bunch of sock puppets deserves exactly what happens to them.
joe from Lowell
It’s easy to forget, John, but George Bush was getting knocked around pretty hard in the summer of 2001. I’d say his honeymoon lasted about 4-5 months, then (obviously) he got another one about 8 months in, which laster for a good 4 years.
Punchy
@Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse: He has graphics on his show, saying "Stewart v. Cramer", and acted all morose and solemn for the first few seconds. Then, in a very contrite tone, says something about "watch this". Then his Martha Stewart bit comes on instead, it plays, he chuckles heartedly at his clear switheroo shenanigans, and says something like "Let’s get back to buisness". Didn’t mention JS at all, nor did he appear one bit more cautious or apologetic.
It’s almost like he did Martha’s show on the same day on purpose just so he could run this bit. Seemed waaaaaay too planned.
joe from Lowell
Aw, c’mon, that’s a pretty good gag.
David
"Honeymoon" isn’t the metaphor word when discussing Bush’s term. It was more like the nine lives of a cat:
1. The attacks of 9/11
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9. The bailouts of 9/19
Anthrax, Abu Ghraib, Katrina, etc. I remember thinking that The Downing Street Memo would bring down the Bush Administration.
Chasm
Part of it is that this administration is willing to talk about things and lets reporters ask questions with a reasonable explanation that they will get an answer that seems to jive with the real world.
From the very first day, the Bush administration shut the media out completely. The made them starve, and then beg like dogs to be fed bullshit.
John Cole
All you need to do to see the difference is imagine Phil Donahue holding nationally televised vigils in which he openly weeps for his country not because of anything Bush has done, but because he fears for the future of the country, and then keeping his job and being widely promoted by his network.
Yeah. Exactly.
kay
@Tax Analyst:
That is what they’re saying. It’s not at all subtle, and there’s nothing else. They’re saying "bad things are going to happen as a result of that Barack Obama, just you wait". Not now, but if he’s allowed to continue. Bad, undefined things.
The economy already sucks. He can hardly make it worse. Where’s the threat?
They’re telling Americans they must immediately abandon Barack Obama and listen to…? About …? Earmarks? Earmarks can be covered in 3 paragraphs. The solution to the scary bad things that might happen is earmark reform?
I just think it’s incoherent. I’m pleased and surprised.
cay
The media want to shake the "liberal bias" meme, so they are hard on Obama. Same with Clinton. Blowjob = Impeachment Bush lying us into war = ?
gil mann
I wonder if the 133t media didn’t blow all its credibility worshipping Bush the Warrior Prince. Blah blah data blah anecdote, but for what it’s worth, the last words out of my right-wing O’Reilly-loving father’s mouth when I talked to my parents last week was "Can you believe the mess Bush left on this guy’s desk? Two Vietnams and that’s not even the first priority."
These assholes at the op-ed pages of major newspapers will consider Obama a failure if he can’t make us all rich by the end of summer. We’re a famously stupid people but we’re not stupid enough to follow their lead.
John H. Farr
Well, that’s one way to put it. I think the truth is far more grave and nearly impossible for most of us to assimilate: the system can’t be corrected…
Inherently unstable and unsustainable, based on a patriarchal world-view ("Kill the goddess!") that’s been on top [heh] for the last few thousand years, it’s pretty much reached the end of its rope. We spend most of our time fretting over the cracks and chaos around the edges, but really, the whole damn thing is fucking doomed. That’s the long and the short of it. Either we mutate, or Nature takes the planet back. There’s no place for virtually any of our current institutions in the future, which won’t resemble what we have going now, not one damn bit. I’m as beholden to the current setup as anyone, but it’s "grow or die" time for us all (he said with typical human arrogance). Nature doesn’t give a damn about the human race, you know — we’re not any more important than any other endangered species…
I also realize that this has veered way OT, but dammit, isn’t politics OT in the larger scheme of things?
El Cid
Sometimes I almost think that we should factor in things like class interest analysis to the running of major news producing corporations. But then I remember that such an approach is divisive and un-American.
Laura W
@John H. Farr: I don’t know how on earth that could be considered OT. Your new site looks great.
Some of them were angry
At the way the earth was abused
By the men who learned how to forge her beauty into power
And they struggled to protect her from them
Only to be confused
By the magnitude of her fury in the final hour
And when the sand was gone and the time arrived
In the naked dawn only a few survived
And in attempts to understand a thing so simple and so huge
Believed that they were meant to live after the deluge
~J. Browne
used to be disgusted
I totally agree about the class biases of the media.
But I’m still not persuaded about the comparative honeymoon thesis. Maybe I’m blind, because of where I was sitting in 2001. But the guy certainly got no honeymoon from me — or from the part of the country that was outraged by Bush v. Gore. Throughout 2001, the country as a whole felt intensely divided to me, until September. Right now, it doesn’t feel intensely divided. The Republicans are a target of pretty open mockery on all the late-night shows.
A Mom Anon
@John H. Farr:
I betcha you’ve read Derrick Jensen haven’t you? Much as I love reading him,his work keeps me awake at night.
Batocchio
DougJ, you’re right, but I think that, as usual, it comes down to who has skin in the game and who benefits. Sadly, among the Beltway crowd, it’s "serious" and completely acceptable to start an unnecessary war (and some companies and institutions benefit). Threaten existing power structures and patronage on the domestic front, though, and then they’ll be up in arms. It’s class solidarity, it’s the establishment protecting its own, and the usual anti-meritocracy. They’ll keep fighting for the poshest staterooms as the ship sinks. Obama is not as much as a reformer as was FDR, although in Obama’s defense he’s going up against powerful, entrenched interests in almost every field – health care, banking, energy, etc. and their pals in Congress and punditry. I’m very concerned about Geithner protecting an incompetent and corrupt old guard at all costs when even leading conservatives are talking of nationalization (for one example on the governing front). But it’s not as if the chattering class, who are inane and shallow in the best of times, really want anything to change that much – they want things "fixed," but not if it costs them anything. (Hey, basically the Reagan pitch in a nutshell.)
El Cid
@Batocchio: Never forget that FDR wasn’t a big reformer up until he was.
TheHatOnMyCat
The question is not whether it’s obvious, the question is what the net effect is.
There’s no empirical basis that I know of for arriving at any particular conclusion about that effect. My hunch is that the net effect right now is positive for Obama. People just generally don’t trust the news media, they always poll somewhere near or below used car salesmen in terms of trust and confidence, and at the moment, press carping in my opinion helps Obama. And will, until the situation changes into what happened to Bush, when the public started to tune him out … at that point, the press carping reinforced the tune-out.
But we are not anywhere near that stage, and may never reach it, if Obama is successful. I think he will be.
Therefore, bottom line, my response here, so what? The media love to be bashed, it’s churn and they live on churn. Hmm, who does that remind us of ….?
To be continued.
DougJ
Well put.
DougJ
I don’t agree at all. But I have no empirical basis for saying that. You could be right.
DougJ
To be clear, I mean a honeymoon granted by the Villagers.
Linkmeister
Speaking of deluges (besides the one we’ve got going out here in the mid-Pacific today), Kim Stanley Robinson wrote a trilogy of books about global warming which might be of interest. It takes place in DC, and it’s not bad.
gil mann
Thanks for the image of Fred Hiatt at the foot of the bed as I consummate my marriage.
By the way, here’s how you know you read blogs too much: I’m at work today, and this senior citizen comes in, and he looks terribly familiar, but I can’t put my finger on it. Not a whole lot of elderly celebrities, y’know? Finally, it dawns on me. I turn to a co-worker and ask "do you know who David Broder is?" She says "no." And I say, "good for you."
bootlegger
@DougJ: The net effect is positive for Obama because he’s "beating" the Villager system right now. It’s one reason they are so verklempt. He seems to be refusing to play their games at times, while playing them like a sousaphone at others (see Limbaugh as R leader meme). He’s taking his message more directly to the voters and the Village Gatekeepers no likey.
DougJ
@gil
Funny.
Elie
#41 John Farr —
You are probably right; but I cannot allow such pessimism to drive my actions or decisions. I am a facilitated optimist. I have to believe that I, that we can still make a difference….Easy? No.
What do you tell your children? What is the point of hope or joy? Is it so much easier to throw up your hands and give up? What do you do with your time while you wait for the absolutely unavoidable end you predict?
dslak
@gil mann: I was at a Christmas party with my wife’s company, and her manager’s husband was seated across from us. The guy was a dead ringer for Paul Wolfowitz. I had to put conscious effort into not giving the poor guy dirty looks.
Wile E. Quixote
@Gil Mann
My uncle looks like Dick Cheney, and he works at the Pentagon too, people have actually stopped what they’re doing when he comes into the room because he looks like Cheney. Fortunately he only looks like Cheney and is actually a Hell of a guy, and unlike Cheney he served in Vietnam and spent 28 years in the Army.
Svensker
@gil mann:
My husband’s uncle looks just like Saddam Hussein. The whole family had a weird sneaking liking for Saddam because the uncle is such a great guy.
gil mann
See, Svensker’s & Wile E.’s are public-domain famous. Dslak, though, you’re hanging out with me in a place I like to call "someone with a richer life wouldn’t know this cat’s face well enough to draw a parallel."
Wasn’t there a This American Life about the guy who played Saddam in the Naked Gun movies, and how his life changed once the post-9/11 fearmongering started?
Max Renn
@georgia pig:
I think also that GWB got a honeymoon in part because the media so hated Al Gore. The Villages despised him with pathological intensity, and were horrified that he won the popular vote and almost made the election unstealable. 2000 remains a stain on the US political process and is something we have not yet been able to deal with on a national level. Remember how fervently the New York Times, the Washington Post, etc. tried to spin the media survey of the different election scenario outcomes? By September of 2001, the media were beginning to regret the bargain that they had made, as most of them had wanted McCain anyway.
jcricket
I think over the next 4 years the media is repeatedly going to find itself in the position it was in during the debates. The "experts" will claim one thing is happening, but the polls will say something clearly different. The experts will then somewhat retract, and be a little chastened, but they’ll revert to their previous behavior each and every time.
They can’t stand the idea that someone connects to the people without them interpreting.
Cain
@Svensker:
A friend of mine grew out his beard and I forwarded him a picture of the leader of Hezbollah. He said even his mother couldn’t tell them apart. Freaked him out, he’s never grown a beard since and he’s afraid of going to Israel.
cain
Terry Ott
"Honeymoon" is a very slippery term, as is "media" with all its forms and manifestations. I read and listen to both liberal and conservative viewpoints, and a (or even "the", perhaps) common thread between them is their contention that the other side is given a "pass" by journalists and commentators.
It may just be that Obama has raised expectations to such a level by his declarations, and has appeared to be so proactive on many fronts, that criticism is inevitable. There ARE lots of us who are scratching our heads and wondering if this administration really IS acting in a coordinated and wise way. "We" may even think that much of what he is advocating is good and necessary. But, we can at the same time think: "All of this, all of it now, at this cost and with this degree of haste — which ensures major snafus in some areas?" Many now wonder, "do we really have to be on financial and legislative steroids regarding all the things Democrats think need fixing?" Some in the media will inevitably echo that sentiment.
When Bush went off his "excellent global adventure" to take on terrorism and all that, I don’t remember that he had a whole other set of diverse agendas he was boldly advancing in terms of being both crucially important and "do it now" urgent. With Bush. for at least a while, people were thinking: "We have to do what we have to do" post 9/11. Congress seemed to think so, both sides of the aisle, until later when it became apparent that we were screwing up by the numbers.
Maybe others will remember differently regarding "Round One" of Bush relative to "Round One" of Obama, but that’s my take.
Also — We KNOW that people hear and see things differently depending on the prisms through which they view the world. And "media bias" is a leading example of that phenomenon. Unless someone can cite a study of the content that looks authentic and sincere, why bother to opine about it? As sincere as YOU might be about your observations of media bias, THEY are just as sincere — and frankly, by picking and choosing examples either side can make what appears to be a convincing case.
Paleo Pat
@AhabTRuler:
Oh man, that was funny! Heh!
But painfully true.
linette stewart
Why doesn’t anyone look back in time when the economic problem really began. It was with the Clinton administration when they enacted NAFTA. American companies started leaving the US because of cheaper wages, and benefits . Plus our goverment started letting people come here and live tax free for seven years..just one problem, they know how to play the game and go back to their own homeland for so many days and then return to live another seven years tax free. And why are we only bailing out banks and auto makers. There are alot of companies that have needed help and where was our goverment..Mr. Obama can come up with all the stimulus bills there is ,,but thats not the answer….get rid of NAFTA and make everyone pay taxes.When do the american born and raised get help…we don’t live tax free…and when did we start changing our language to something other than english..I can’t speak for everyone else..but last I knew English was our main language….
DougJ
Wrong! It was when Carter put in the CRAs.
itsbenj
you have nicely illustrated Josh Marshall’s theory about DC being ‘hard wired’ to cover Republicans more favorably than Democrats. I mean, you can just use the simply numbers regarding how many D vs R people you see being asked to comment, debate, (let alone host) the various talking heads ‘pretend we’re experts at something other than smiling at the camera’ news shows. its been totally disproportionate for years and years. even during these past couple of years of Democratic ascendancy, this has been pretty much constant.
while Bush is pres, ask a bunch of Republicans about how great he is. when Obama becomes president, ask a bunch of Republicans about how terrible he is. or, better yet, see if you can get Evan Bayh to say how terrible he is. yeah!